Fliers body seeks more reforms in aviation sector

New Delhi: The fliers body Air Passengers Association of India (APAI) has called for more radical reforms in the aviation sector, while welcoming the recent passenger-centric initiatives like issuance of e-boarding passes at Hyderabad.

APAI President D Sudhakara Reddy said measures like pilot projects to do away with baggage tags in five airports, including at Delhi and Mumbai, and issuance of e-boarding passes at Hyderabad would help in making air travel seamless and hassle free.

"These are welcome steps. Many radical reforms can be brought about to embellish the air travel in India. There should be constant efforts to elicit feedback of passengers and to act on them," he said.

The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), which handles the security of 59 airports of the 95 aerodromes, has decided to do away with the practice of putting security stamps on passengers' hand baggage, as part of a pilot project to smoothen air travel.

The pilot project will be started at airports in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru from December 15.

Similarly, GMR Hyderabad Airport had late last year put in place e-boarding mechanism, which includes all boarding processes right from entry into the airport terminal, check-in, security check, boarding gate and boarding bridge check.

The tag less baggage can help in maintaining the timeliness of flights, among other benefits, Reddy said.

"Often, it is found that a passenger, who loses the security cleared tag can hold back the departure of the flight since it is mandatory that every passenger have security cleared hand baggage," he said.

Tag less baggage, Reddy observed, should be implemented in all airports if the experiment proves to be a success.

"Backed by a foolproof surveillance through CCTVs and other security devices, there is no reason why it should not be successful at the pilot stage.

"While bringing all other airports into this regime, it should be ensured that the airports have state-of-art security systems like high precision X-ray machines, high resolution CCTVs etc for bringing in zero tolerance to any security lapses," he said.

Reddy said e-boarding passes can considerably reduce the reporting time for passengers bound for domestic and international travel, and bring about qualitative changes to the travel experience.

"Not only will the initiative reduce reporting time, which is exceedingly high in India, it will also attract more passengers from other modes of transport to air travel," he added.